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I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)

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Re: I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)

#181

Post by [deleted] »

shaki-dora wrote: post #165
foxfired wrote: post #37

I was always afraid to read any classical work because no matter what you think you read, someone will tell you "Actually..." Then one day I read this beautiful quote about the old man and the sea: > “Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolism. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that…

It’s possible to leave traces of whatever inner conflict tortures you in your writing without even knowing. For example, the disdain of the humanities in this thread (and generally on HN and the tech community) is just begging for an explanation, because the stated reasons (entirely useless, plain wrong) are neither true, nor would they seem sufficient to warrant the level of emotion. So there’s something else in the…

[deleted]

Re: I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)

#182

Post by rland »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #172
gatherhunterer wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literary analysis is overly criticized due to poor teaching of humanities. I disagree with some of the interpretations that I have heard of major literary works but no one has ever forced those ideas on me, I have never been censured for proposing an interpretation that differs from another. Bad teaching is a shame but dismissing an entire academic field because you had a poor experience as a child is self-aggrandize…

Let's call spade a spade: if a literary critic is creating an interpretation that goes beyond what the author intended to convey, they're pulling meaning out of their ass. It's completely arbitrary and has no validity; at best it boils down to psychoanalyzing the author (and the critic is not qualified for that), trying to guess what the author "truly wanted" to say without realizing they want it to say. A simple exp…

“Goes beyond what the author intended to convey” — there is no such thing. What the author intended to convey was exactly what was written.

Interpretations differ, and hence a literary critic is born.

Re: I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)

#183

Post by C1sc0cat »

anbop wrote: post #80
foxfired wrote: post #37

I was always afraid to read any classical work because no matter what you think you read, someone will tell you "Actually..." Then one day I read this beautiful quote about the old man and the sea: > “Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolism. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that…

One mark of a good classical education is that the literal reading is more meaningful than the allegorical.

Not sure I would agree with you some of the classical Greek plays have to be read with an understanding of what was happening at the time.

Re: I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)

#184

Post by evandijk70 »

Out of curiosity, I took the test for the first poem and got all questions correct. I've always been relatively good at standardised tests, and agree they don't always measure something meaningful.

The author is being a little harsh, testing reading skills is difficult, and she does not provide a better alternative to evaluate students reading ability. Moreover, based on her comments, I'm pretty sure that if she were to take the text, she would score a 100%.

The questions and answers:

https://tea.texas.gov/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id...

https://tea.texas.gov/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id...

Re: I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)

#185

Post by rcxdude »

anticensor wrote: post #87
Symbiote wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Britain manages to set questions for the exams taken at ages 16, (17) and 18 with essay-type questions, for most questions of all subjects. There's a complete paper for GCSE (at 16) English here. Choose the June 2017 one, as the November one has the source material omitted due to copyright. https://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/english/gcse/english-languag... You can skip to the last few pages of the mark scheme to get the…

> omitted due to copyright It is actually omitted due to testcenter policy, to enable reuse. You cannot reuse an exam with its answer key published.

I highly doubt this. I had access to basically all past papers (questions and answers) for my GCSE and A levels. The exam board cannot assume students don't have this. (That said, it was not hard to spot patterns in the questions they asked over time. English was generally reasonably different, but the electronics papers would just copy and paste questions from one year to the next and change some of the numbers).

Re: I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)

#186

Post by Arnt »

p1esk wrote: post #106
legohead wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read Crime and Punishment for the first time recently. found it quite boring and with limited meaning. but I am a 40 year old man and understood the concepts the book was introducing a long time ago. I feel like with the advent of the internet, shocking concepts/ideas are hard to come by. I'm sure ideas in the book were provocative "back then," but nowadays, not so much. I even watched some lectures on youtube disc…

Actually... (sorry, couldn’t resist), I’m not sure why you expected something shocking or even provocative. The book is a deep dive into the mind of someone who decides to commit a murder, does it, and then has to live with it. That someone happens to be a relatively normal guy who you can understand and even relate to. At least that was my impression of the book when I read it 25 years ago (I was 16 at the time).

That was shocking at the time the book was written. The murderer was supposed to be an Other, not someone you can relate to. The book was shocking because it made the reader feel the murderer's dilemmas. See his rationales, such as they were.

I have the impression that the book has kept a part of its old reputation, even as the world has changed and it would never get that reputation in today's world.

Re: I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)

#187

Post by jayd16 »

Veen wrote: post #145

High school literary criticism is just training for basic interpretation skills. It doesn't matter what's really "in" the poem, just that the student is capable of rudimentary analysis of meaning and symbolism and so on. If they went on to study literary criticism at a higher level with a decent teacher, they'd have to justify their interpretations with reference to the work as a whole, the writer's other work, their…

You don't find it odd that this analysis of meaning does not require meaning? Isn't it more like creative writing at the high school level?

Re: I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)

#188

Post by akvadrako »

lenova wrote: post #84
derp_dee_derp wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad I can't read it because HN quotes suck on mobile and don't work with the brave browser in Android. @dang fix your mobile css and styling.

Try this instead: https://hackerweb.app/

It’s not much better. Still requires scrolling left and right for each line.

Re: I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)

#189

Post by EliRivers »

skookumchuck wrote: post #58
dejaime wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good analogy. It's really hard to "measure knowledge," and in my humble opinion, as someone who once was a teacher, tests are one of the hardest ways of doing so.

> tests are one of the hardest ways of doing so I've never understood how someone could master a subject and yet be unable to answer any questions about it. In my experience, people who did well on tests tended to understand the topic, and the people who didn't do well made excuses.

I've never understood how someone could master a subject and yet be unable to answer any questions about it.

How about spoken English? I know a great many people who are able to express themselves clearly and gramatically - surely mastery of spoken English - but ask them what the rule is for order of adjectives or some such and many of them would even need to double check what an adjective is.

Re: I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)

#190

Post by goto11 »

philliphaydon wrote: post #24

I absolutely agree I dropped out of school because of this. Because I failed writing an essay on world war 1 poetry. It’s not right to dissect art and fail a student for “wrong” answers.

It is absolutely possible to misunderstand poetry. (Not saying you did that)
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